Docs give Afghan child a new lease of life
Indian doctors gave a new lease of life to the an Afghan child with a Long QT syndrome, a genetic ailment that makes him susceptible for heart attacks. 14-month old Mushtaba’s elder brother and sister had died in their infancy due to the same ailment, which forced his parents to bring him to Delhi and get him treated.
Mushtaba had a heart attack over a fortnight ago in Kabul where the doctors revived him but due to limitations of health facilities, his father decided to bring him to Escorts Heart Institute where the doctors decided to implant a cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) inside the child’s body.
On Saturday, doctors at Escorts Heart institute performed the procedure to implant the ICD, their first on such a young patient. In 2008, doctors here had conducted a similar procedure on a six-year-old child.
“The Long QT Syndrome is a condition of serious rhythm disorder of heart for which an electric shock is required to be delivered and the ICD does simply that to normalise the situation whenever there is an abnormal rhythm,” said Dr Anil Saxena, associate director, cardiac pacing and electrophysiology, at the hospital.
Mushtaba’s father, Mohammad Ali Eshan, who is himself a surgeon and director of Kabul’s Ishtaqlal hospital, said his son was responding well to the treatment.
“For three days our son was in ICU but our country does not have good health facilities in the wake of the post-conflict scenario. We rushed him to New Delhi,” Mohammad Eshan said.
The couple — Eshan and Farista — had had tragic experiences earlier, and had lost a 3-year-old daughter and an 18-month-old son to the genetic ailment.
Given that this was the first time the procedure was being conducted on a child this young, senior paediatric cardiac surgeon was also roped in for the procedure that took over an hour to complete.
“Implantation was done with the help of Dr Sunil Kaushal, who inserted the leads inside the pericardium and one of them was stitched to the heart,” Dr Saxena said.
While in older patients, the device is implanted over the chest, in this case it had to be done over the abdomen. The device will have to be monitored regularly and has to be reprogrammed time and again depending upon the need. The device also has to be replaced every five to seven years.
Post new comment